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Monthly Archives: November 2006

It’s Thanksgiving day here in the U.S. I’m thinking about what it means to be thankful, and of course, where is the lesson to be applied to sports and transformational change of any kind. As usual, my mind has come up with something. I don’t know where it comes from but I seem to be able to turn any event or idea into a metaphor for achievement.

This idea of being thankful comes from my latest book readings. Let me tell you about applied kinesiology. This is where you can test a person’s strength while they are saying positive and negative comments. You can actually measure a person’s strength drop significantly when negative versus positive self-talk.

One of the most powerful self-talk ideas you can do is to be grateful! Thankful! Yep, I tried this out on myself lately after doing demos in my speeches with athletes.

Let me explain: I love to workout at the gym. And lateley, just for kicks and the challenge, I am trying to put on some muscle on this small-framed 43 year old body. By the way, another book I read “Quantum Healing” says that there is no scientific reason to lose your muscle tone as you get older. You will lose stamina, but you don’t have to lose muscles.

Anyway, back to the subject. I had always liked to listen to hard rock while working out. It felt like I was “pumping up” my energy. Now, I still do that on the way to the gym just to get the energetic feelings to be motivated to work out. Except when I actually am lifting the weights, I don’t listen anymore. I leave the music in the car. I think about what I’m grateful for. I say the words “grateful, grace, thank you, etc.” while lifting!

In trying to increase my strength, I write down exactly how much and how many lifts I do for each exercise as I was taught to do by a coach.
I cannot believe how much faster I am progressing in increasing my weights since I use “grateful” instead of rock music while exercising!

Yes, this is anecdotal about one guy and his experience. AND, I challenge you to bring this tool into your life and to your golf. I have yet to do this on the golf course since I just came into these learnings and now it’s pretty much too cold for me to want to golf.

I was originally turned to this idea of gratitude by the movie “The Secret”
and thought it was a nice concept but didn’t really implement it until now. All of a sudden, I am reading about this everywhere! I can’t escape it, and I don’t want to. I’m working it into everything.